As a former Soviet citizen born in Belarus I was brought up on stories of bloody and gritty battles: fall of Minsk and Kiev in Operation Barbarossa, siege of Leningrad, defense of Moscow… Stalingrad, Kursk, later in the war - Budapest and Berlin. Each one of them was horrible and heavily traumatic for everyone involved…
Still those battles created kind of heroic mythology being seen as an important part of the war’s history. The battle I want to name has distinction of being not famous and only infamous for a huge amount of casualties. It was inconclusive, with indecisive results and of unclear strategical importance… the battle which was not popular to speak about on both sides of the front lines.
The series of Soviets offensives and German counter-offensives through year 1942 and beginning of 1943 around town of Rzhev in Kalinin Oblast ended with over 1,000,000 Soviet and around 500,000 German soldiers dead/missing/captured or injured. None of sides succeeded to reach their objectives.
The campaign became known as “Rzhevskaya myasorubka” e.g "Rzhev Meat Grinder"
It still has cultural impact as maybe the most tragic WW2 war poem speaks about this not well known battle:
Alexander Tvardovsky
I was killed near Rzhev...
I was killed near Rzhev
In a nameless bog,
In fifth company,
On the Left flank,
In a cruel air raid
I didn’t hear explosions
And did not see the flash
Down to an abyss from a cliff
No start, no end
And in this whole world
To the end of its days —
Neither patches, nor badges
From my tunic you’ll find
…
Full text:
No comments:
Post a Comment